Two years ago, he ran for vice president on a ticket with pornographer Larry Flynt, whose very sanity has occasionally been called into question. Never conventional in his selection of friends and causes, Means has courted Libya’s besieged pariah Moammar Kadafi and the Nation of Islam’s loose-tongued brother Louis Farrakhan. Designer jeans and pleated pants are his most conspicuous concession to the white world of fashion. His braids are always elaborately dressed in long leather-fringe bindings. Wherever he goes nowadays, he is invariably bedecked in enough turquoise, silver, beadwork, cowhide and snakeskin to make even other Indians turn and stare.

He is at his best when the TV cameras are rolling.įormer California boy, one-time public accountant, ex-ballroom dance instructor and past fashion plate given to three-piece suits and French cuffs, Means threw away his ties after Wounded Knee and became a Hollywood vision of the forever resplendent Indian. Occasionally, he tempers his militancy with just enough quick, cynical wit to make even his critics smile. He travels constantly, strident, defiant, volatile and more opinionated than ever, lecturing to whoever will listen about the assorted evils of capitalism, Marxism, the white man, and whatever new cause may have captured his fancy. He has seen himself as a global figure ever since, spokesman not only for AIM but for all oppressed, indigenous peoples of the world. Looking at the pair today, it’s hard to envision them willingly occupying even the same room for more than an hour, much less an entire village for 2 1/2 months.įor Russell Means, now 46, life took on exciting new flavor at Wounded Knee. While one now enthusiastically plots the capture of some 120 million reservation prairie dogs, the other wants to help Ronald Reagan topple the Marxist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. But now, for the first time in 13 years, Dennis Banks and Russell Means are both back where it all began, living about 30 miles apart on the Pine Ridge reservation.

The damned by la banks